Northern N.J. may be hit hardest in U.S. Post Office closings; see list of possible closures

Saed Hindash/The Star-LedgerLinda Blasi, a Postal Service employee helps, Mukesh Prajapati, of Jersey City, at the Postal Office location at 40 Clinton Street in Newark Tuesday afternoon. US Postal Service has announced that it will close hundreds of post offices across the country. This is one location that they are considering closing.

When Betsy Guarducci heard her post office was one of thousands across the country slated to be closed, it put her daily walk to the Clinton Street branch in a whole new light.

What will she do if the government takes away a service she has depended upon for years?

"It’s just so easy to walk down here and have them put a postage on it," Guarducci, executive director of Greater Essex Counseling Services, said Tuesday at the Newark midtown branch. "Everything that I mail, I mail here."

She was far from alone in her reaction Tuesday to the U.S. Postal Service’s announcement that it’s considering closing nearly 3,700 of its approximately 32,000 stations and branches across the U.S. — including 50 in New Jersey — to cut costs. The list has not been finalized, but closings are expected to begin by January, officials said, and at this point all 50 states and Washington, D.C., are affected.

In addition, some 4,500 postal workers could lose their jobs. The number of workers who could be laid off in New Jersey was not available.

While postal officials said the majority of closings would affect rural branches across the country, New Jersey would be hit hardest in its northern urban and suburban municipalities. Only a handful of the proposed 50 closures are in southern New Jersey or on the Shore.

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Newark’s main post office would stay open, but the city could lose four of its branches. Hoboken and Union City each have three locations tagged for potential closure.

In 2009, the Postal Service announced a restructuring of northern New Jersey’s mail-distribution system and closed a Whippany center in January, laying off 45 workers.

The Postal Service has been hemorrhaging millions of dollars a year and now faces a $20 billion gap that officials aim to close by 2015. Proposals to reduce services to five days a week also are being considered.

Assemblyman Albert Coutinho (D-Essex) said Tuesday’s move reflects "an economic reality" but insisted people should still have "reasonable access" to postal services. Seven post offices may be closed in his district alone, which includes parts of Essex and Union counties.

Coutinho said he’s worried that shutting down post offices would create "extraordinarily long wait times" at neighboring branches.

"If someone is inconvenienced and has to go an extra six or seven blocks," they should not have to wait in long lines, he said.

In Hillside, Mayor Joseph Menza said shuttering the township’s two post offices means residents, plus folks on the Irvington and Newark border who use the Hillside Avenue branch, will all be out of luck.

"It’ll be affecting three communities, and that’s horrible," Menza said. He added elderly residents who rely mainly on so-called snail mail will get hit hardest.

"They’re resistant to use computers," Menza said. "They don’t have the mobility to get around either."

Closing Roselle’s sole post office would force residents to go to the next nearest location in Roselle Park, Mayor Garrett Smith said. But unfortunately, that one’s on the chopping block, too.